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A Gas Tax for the Greater Good

Where have you gone, $3 gasoline? Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush, is nostalgic for those heady, halcyon days of yore. “I would like to see Congress increase the gas tax by $1 per gallon, phased in gradually by 10 cents per year over the next decade,” Mankiw writes on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal.

Mankiw lists seven ways a higher gax tax would be a good thing. By discouraging driving, it would help reduce global warming, for one: “Higher gasoline taxes, perhaps as part of a broader carbon tax, would be the most direct and least invasive policy to address environmental concerns.” Discouraging driving would also reduce traffic congestion, which Mankiw sees as a good thing in and of itself, aside from the environmental benefits. Thirdly, a higher gas tax would spur people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, without the “adverse side effects” of CAFE standards, which Mankiw says are “heavy-handed government regulations replete with unintended consequences.”

A higher gas tax, he argues, would also reduce the deficit (“A $1 per gallon hike in gas tax would bring in $100 billion a year in government revenue”), hit some enemies of America in the pocketbook (“Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.”), promote long-term growth by reducing the government’s reliance on income taxes that discourage savings and investment, and improve national security with “positive spillovers to foreign affairs” that reduce U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

What garbage. All additional tax would do is further strain the average working person, who already is driving at a minimum, and benefit no one. Unless you count the fact that for the billionaires, and gas moguls, the roads would be less crowded as the poor working stiff just tries to get to work to make the billionaires trillionaires.

A gas tax increase would hurt all those people who have to drive to work because their communities do not provide adequate mass transit. Most commuters have no choice but to drive to work and many have suffered greatly with the recent increase of prices at the pump. It is ridiculous and callous to suggest this would curb driving. To cut down on the amount people drive, we need employers and communities to do better planning and consider the relationship between where people live and where they work. Creating an industrial space or business area that is easily accessible by bus or train to people who live in residential areas, or even increasing living space in town near major business locations would be a lot better than essentially blackmailing workers into demanding mass transit. That would take years, cause great pain, and possibly never work. What would really happen is people who couldn’t afford to drive the long distances would change jobs and the rich guys with limousines would keep driving and not care. This is just another guy who doesn’t know anything about the working stiffs of this nation making suggestions that spare the hardship of those terrible regulations that cause so much suffering to those poor sad giant corporations. I wonder what kind of car he drives.

The problem with a new gas taxes is that once the government collects the funds they spend it on something other than what it was collected for.
The profits from State Lotteries and the Tobacco Settlement are two examples of cash disappearing into the general funds of govt. to make up for a deficit because they can’t control handing out vote getting pork.
The money never seems to go to the proposed purpose when the legislation was passed.
The proposed $1 gas tax will only hurt the middle and lower income people.

Members of the middle class have made poor decisions by moving so far out in to the suburbs just so they can either 1) avoid the black people or 2) have a house which is much to big anyway.
Tough luck, they mad a bad choice in their attempts to live beyond their means.
If people had made reasonable choices in the size of the house they thought they needed they wouldnt be an hours drive away from work. Or if they had decided that maybe they would be able to have their kids go to school with black kids in a mixed neighborhood.
No sympathy.

The only people who have sympathy are people in the rural areas of the country, the midwest, the mountain west areas where people are farmers etc.. and really really have no choice. But then again with the 100 billion in revenue, the government can give rebates to those people to ease the burden. And of course, can invest in more public transport.

Gas is way too cheap. Expensive prices drive behavioral changes in consumers. A gas tax would hurt–but good. I’m with the economist. It’s time to shift to fuel efficiency and alternatives. A higher gas price will open the market for these products. Painful in the short term–necessary in the long term.